Carrying on from part one then, this is all well and good with regards to what was mentioned at the end of part one but if the person involved has what is called a “very low attitude to risk” then they should not be doing it. If they are not psychologically inclined to be able to ride the sometimes violent fluctuations in the market then investing in that kind of thing is wrong for them.
Also if the stock market went through one of its steep downward trends like it did a few years ago and this person panicked and withdrew their money through ignorance or fear then they would have lost a very substantial amount of money, I know people personally who did and it was a very sad sight.
How you handle your money has basically an awful lot to do with what suits you as a person and not what someone says that you should do or what I or anybody else has done for that matter. I had a very low attitude to risk when I first started playing, I wanted to play professional level poker but this means playing for sizeable amounts of money and this was something that I found very uncomfortable.
So I had a very serious problem to overcome with regards to playing online poker, I had two parts of my personality that were basically at war with each other. On one side was this person that had a burning desire to play poker at a high level and on the other side was my more cautious and play it safe self holding me back.
A lot of books say that the answer to this is to start playing poker at low levels and slowly work your way up and build a bankroll and taking sign up bonuses along the way to boost it. Once again this is RUBBISH, anyone who plays low level poker and especially Limit Texas Hold’em will be likely beaten by the effect of the rake. It is not so bad in No Limit and this is why I advise players to go down this route. There is a world of difference between a $1-$2 Limit game and a $1-$2 No Limit game.
The Limit poker game will have about an average pot size of 5/6 big bets whereas the No Limit game will have on average at least double that for most games. The best player on the table can be a loser in a low stakes limit game and few players earn decent money out of it even allowing for multi-tabling online. But there is another subtle but highly significant reason why this advice is wrong and that has to do with personal motivation. One of the best pieces of advice that I ever heard about selecting the right level to play at for you went like this,
“Play at a level that motivates not intimidates”
This simple statement highlights a reason why many players fail in poker. They play at a level that is too small to mean anything to them and they end up not focusing or playing properly and basically messing about on the table. This means that they lose money, maybe not all at once but slowly but surely drip feeding it over time.
The level has to motivate you enough to play properly without it scaring you, once you identify this level THEN you have found the correct level to play at and not what any book or anyone else tells you.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson